There
was no referendum, no opinion polls, and no cross-party or public
debate, as there usually is when genuine democracies inform people about
their choices so that they can make decisions and accept
responsibilities.
The announcement by Iraq’s Shia-led government last week of plans to
create several new provinces, some of them from contested parts of the
country, has taken most Iraqis by surprise and renewed fears of Iraq’s
“soft partitioning”.
It also comes amid reports that preparations are underway with
international backing to declare Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan
Region independent within the next five years.
Iraq’s latest conflict began on 21 January when the government
announced plans to turn Tuz Khurmatu and Talafar, two towns which fall
inside Iraq’s so-called “disputed territories” which are claimed by
almost all Iraq’s mosaic of different ethnicities, into new provinces.
Two days later the government said it also planned to turn three more
districts into governorates, including Fallujah, a district in Anbar,
Iraq’s largest province and a stronghold of Sunni resistance against the
Shia-dominated government.
Shia Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki described the decision, taken by a
majority of his ministers, as being “irreversible” because he said it
was “constitutional and lawful.” Iraq is currently divided into 18
muhafazat, or governorates. Three of these constitute the northern
Kurdistan Region and the rest are under the central government’s
control.
In explaining why it wanted to establish the new governorates, the
government said the districts were large enough in area and population
to be upgraded to the status of provinces. It said the new arrangements
would help to boost economic development in the provinces and provide
better services and social care to their populations.
Yet, the government’s plans for a new provincial map of Iraq have
opened up many challenges on both the local and national levels. Many
Iraqis question their policy objectives, legitimacy and timing.
Under the plans, which need to be ratified by the Iraqi parliament, Tuz
Khurmatu, a district dominated by Shia Muslims of Turkmen ethnicity and
annexed to the Sunni Arab-dominated Salah Al-Din province, is to be a
separate province.
Another town whose inhabitants are also mostly Shia Muslims of Turkmen
ethnicity, Talafar, now controlled by Nineveh, a Sunni Arab-dominated
province, is also to be declared a separate governorate.
Since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003 that toppled the
Sunni-controlled regime of former president Saddam Hussein both Tuz
Khurmatu and Talafar have been subjected to frequent bombings by the
Al-Qaeda terrorist group, and the plan reawakens hopes that they will
now assume their own security and governance.
It came as no surprise that the Turkmens, who are Iraq’s third-largest
ethnicity, hailed their upgrading as an opportunity for greater
political influence alongside the country’s Kurds and Arabs.
Leaders of the Turkmen community, which has been complaining of
marginalisation in recent years, urged the national parliament to
quickly endorse the government plans.
Iraq’s Christian minority, which has also been complaining of exclusion
and discrimination, hailed the decision to turn the largely Christian
populated Nineveh areas into a province as a blessing.
Some Iraqi Christians have called for a separate Christian “federal
entity” in these areas of northern Iraq in the hope that they could
thereby gain greater autonomy, security and political status.
But the Kurds, who had hoped that the three would-be provinces would
become part of their autonomous region, have voiced strong reservations
to the move, which has been vetoed by Kurdish cabinet ministers.
Though the Kurdistan Regional Government has refrained from commenting
on the plans thus far, Kurdish MPs slammed them as unconstitutional and
politically motivated.
Meanwhile, Sunni Arabs in Nineveh railed against the plans, which will
take both Talafar and the Plain of Nineveh from the largely Sunni Arab
populated province.
Governor Atheel Al-Nujaifi of Nineveh said he would ask the provincial
council to declare Nineveh a federal region if the parliament moved
ahead and approved the plans.
Sunnis in Anbar also rejected the idea of carving Fallujah out of the already Sunni majority province.
Meanwhile, rival Shia groups have also been lukewarm about the plans,
partly because they see them as designed to serve the election campaign
of Al-Maliki who is seeking a third term in office in the 30 April
polls.
Leader of the Shia Sadrist parliamentary bloc Bahaa Al-Aaraji said the decision would “open the door to the splitting of Iraq.”
A closer look at the plans, however, indicates that the Al-Maliki
government’s decision may not be haphazard, as some outside observers
had previously suggested. Its intention is to redraw the borders of
Iraq’s provinces in case the partitioning of the country becomes
inevitable.
Its main goal is apparently to create pockets inhabited by ethnicities
other than Kurds that would encircle the Kurdish enclave in the north of
the country and bloc its expansion into the disputed territories.
With calls for Sunni Arab autonomy within a federal Iraqi state gaining
strength, the plans also aim at limiting their assertion of territorial
control.
In recent weeks, Sunni leaders have been increasingly vocal about demanding their autonomy.
Last week, Sunni Speaker of the Parliament Osama Al-Nujaifi traveled to
Washington to discuss Sunni grievances with US President Barack Obama
and Vice-President Joe Biden.
Prominent Sunni MP Saleem Al-Juburi said Al-Nujaifi had discussed with
Obama and Biden the possibility of declaring the Sunni-populated
provinces as federal regions within Iraq.
“This is the [only] solution if other solutions fail,” he told Iraqi Al-Summeria television.
In 2006, Biden, who was a leading US senator at the time, proposed the
so-called “soft partition” plan to divide Iraq into three
semi-autonomous regions held together by a central government.
But the plan was seen by many Iraqis as paving the way for breaking up
the Iraqi state into three separate entities for Kurds, Shias and
Sunnis.
A Kurdish news outlet close to the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party
reported this week that the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq
would declare its independence within five years.
Rudaw quoted energy advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government Ali
Balu as saying that Kurdistan “is going to be rid of its status as a
region within Iraq.”
“A plan is underway for Kurdistan to be an independent state in the
near future,” he said. According to Balu, Kurdistan’s independence would
be driven by the region’s geostrategic position and its rich energy
reserves.
He said that Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani’s participation in the
World Economic Forum at Davos last week had been to pave the way for
international recognition of Kurdistan as an independent state.
Barzani has repeatedly warned that the Kurds will seek independence if
the region’s disputes with Baghdad over oil, the region’s budget and its
territory remain unresolved.
More broadly, the widely expected moment of Iraq’s split may now be
finally approaching. It has long been assumed that the failure of
Al-Maliki’s coalition government would push Iraq into “soft
partitioning” as the only means of avoiding a fully-fledged civil war
and the growing threat of a regional flare-up.
Given the increased violence and political uncertainty in Iraq today,
the new plans, which would initiate substantive changes in Iraq’s
ethno-political map in addition to Kurdistan’s alleged preparations for
early independence, raise the question of whether Iraq will remain
united in 2020.
In a country where fundamental issues remain unresolved, including the
future shape of its provincial boundaries and power-sharing, things are
likely to continue teetering on the brink.
With communal divisions sharpening and violence going unabated, the
Iraqis’ faith in a unitary state is fading and many of them may now be
surrendering to what they see as inevitable.